Terror in the Third Dimension: How ‘Friday the 13th Part III’ Helped Pioneer the Return of 3D

Friday the 13^th Part 2 followed almost immediately on the heels of its immensely successful predecessor. While far from a critical favorite, the original film made a ton of money, even eventually beating out Empire Strikes Back at the box office. And that was a much bigger deal when movies had significantly longer theatrical runs, especially before the onset of home video. Of course, the marketing campaign no doubt had a huge hand in that success. Before a script had even been written, director Sean Cunningham took out a full-page ad in Variety with the title prominently displayed, promising Friday the 13^th as “The most terrifying motion picture ever made.”

Gimmicks, especially of this old-school William Castle variety, were baked into the DNA of Friday the 13^th from the very beginning. Even the notion of making a sequel at that time was kind of gimmicky. Though it had begun to happen more and more, sequels were fairly uncommon and usually reserved for huge blockbusters like Jaws, Superman and Star Wars. On paper, Friday the 13^th Part 2 is more of the same. The formula, the structure are almost identical because it worked so well the first time. The murder sequences are just as prominently on display as they were in the original. Part 2 takes everything that worked and builds on that foundation to make an even better movie. The biggest issue with the original is that we’re given no room to really guess who the killer might be, with Mrs. Voorhees arriving only a scene before she’s revealed to be the one responsible for these brutal killings.

Part 2 turns Jason Voorhees into a local ghost story and nicely juxtaposes the notion of this campfire legend with the reality of a man who survived drowning as a boy and has been living in the woods surrounding the camp ever since. Everything from the shack he built with his own hands to his potato sack mask seem designed to convey Jason as a very realistic backwoods threat. Steve Miner did a hell of a job directing the sequel, providing the franchise with a needed central villain as well as more rounded characters—particularly its heroine, Ginny—and generally crafting a more atmospheric, scarier film.

He was a natural choice to direct Part III, but there was a question about whether the same director would want to return to essentially redo the same formula all over again. That was a question for Miner as well. He noted in an interview in Fangoria #21 that they considered several sequel possibilities that would break away from the summer camp slasher formula of the first two movies. One in particular revolved around Ginny in a psychiatric hospital, living in fear that Jason was still coming for her, questioning whether or not he was a real threat or if everything was only taking place in her own mind. Obviously, that was scrapped and they basically decided to take an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to another Friday the 13^th, with the woods, the lake, the killer and the kills that audiences had come to expect.

Around this same time, 3D was making a comeback, though on a very small scale. The return of 3D back then was nothing like we’ve seen for the past decade since the momentous release of Avatar. Instead, this very minor return of the third dimension was heralded by films like Charles Band’s Parasite, starring Demi Moore. It was as small-scale as could be and most theaters were completely unprepared for it, especially as they needed a new silver screen installed to even be able to project the movies properly. Yet even with the trial and error risks, there was something about 3D that felt perfect for the smirking, in-your-face antics of Friday the 13^th. It’s a natural combination.

But the process of actually shooting Friday the 13^th Part III in 3D proved to be notoriously difficult. Many of the actors have talked about it in many interviews, noting that even if they nailed a scene, they would need to do take after take because they couldn’t get the 3D to work properly. Things would be constantly out-of-focus; they needed to be lined up exactly just to get a workable shot. The film shot on an Arriflex camera using a Marks 3-D system, which even had a reputation for being extremely difficult at the time. It was even more challenging when they were making this movie in particular, because 3D just wasn’t common use. Most films weren’t doing it and the ones that were, were doing it on an extremely small scale.

In the interview in Fangoria #21, Miner even noted that it was next to impossible to find the “perfect” 3D system in a pre-Internet world where 3D wasn’t even widely used. “There’s no ‘state of the art’ where 3D is concerned,” Miner said at the time, “because all of the systems are from backyard inventors who are piecing them together.” In an age when every movie has a 3D release whether it was shot that way or not, it’s kind of crazy to look back on it as a kind of mad science; even a major studio release from Paramount had to look into technology that was basically being designed by guys in their garages and backyards.

What’s great about the use of 3D in Friday the 13^th Part III, though, is that it conveys every aspect of a Friday the 13^th movie in the third dimension, not just the outrageous deaths. Seeing this film, even with your paper red-and-blue glasses that come with the Blu-ray, is not like seeing anything else in 3D. Not only do you have harpoons flying at your face, you’ve got the fake-out gags like seeing a rat or a snake when you expect to see Jason. You’ve got a joint being passed to you from the screen. Everything you expect from the franchise, just in general, comes flying toward your face. And yeah, sometimes it’s a little much. It does get a little overzealous in its constant reminder to the audience that they are, in fact, seeing it in 3D. From yo-yos to handstands and everything in between. But again, this wasn’t something that people were really seeing at the time.

I can only imagine what it was like to see Friday the 13^th Part III in a crowded theater back in 1982, though I did luckily have the experience explained to me. I rented Part III when I was eight years old with a friend of the family, knowing nothing other than the fact that it was the next entry in the franchise that I hadn’t seen after Parts 1 and 2. As soon as it started, she grabbed her husband’s arm and said, “Bub, we saw this one in theaters! In 3D, remember?” Each gag that popped up got a gleeful, “I remember that!” And it was without a doubt the best way to watch the movie for the first time.

In particular, I wish I could jump in a time machine and just watch the moment when Jason walked out onto the dock wearing the hockey mask for the first time in 3D. Seeing that reveal, with the depth and the audience reaction, had to be an amazing thing, even if the franchise was not nearly as big then as it is now. Interestingly, considering that Part 2 was extremely successful and there was no real need to course correct, it’s kind of amazing that we got the hockey mask at all and especially that it was Miner who gave it to us. That usually feels like the kind of thing that another director would do to put their own stamp on it.

Reading through interviews, it doesn’t seem like there was ever any question that they would use a new mask in Part III and retire the sack, even though it was in completely fine shape on the floor of Jason’s shack. If anything, it seems like the potato sack was impractical, especially for the late Steve Dash who could only see out of one eye; and even then, only when the eye hole was taped in place.

Friday the 13^th Part III was released on August 13^th, 1982 and it was without a doubt a success. At the time, it was the widest release ever for a 3D movie. People went nuts for it and the gimmick worked like gangbusters. While studios like Universal had released the Creature from the Black Lagoon series in 3D among others, this was a 3D release on a scale that had not been achieved before, and one that was met with serious blockbuster success. It even had an immediate impact, as other major franchises followed suit. Sure, on paper, inspiring the likes of Jaws 3D and Amityville 3D seems small, but it really wasn’t.

The Amityville Horror, after all, was a huge success and a story that people were still buzzing about. And Jaws was still widely considered to be the biggest movie of all time. It’s amazing that a Friday the 13^th flick could impact those decisions. That because of its success, other major properties started following suit. Before the release of this sequel, 3D was considered a B-Movie gimmick. And it’s never really not been considered a gimmick in general, even after Avatar. But without Friday the 13^th, I don’t think 3D becomes anything near what we consider it to be. Part III made it a studio gimmick, made it something that everyone would go see just to watch the carnage pop off the screen.

On home video, it loses something and it’s a shame that the original 3D intention has never really been restored. Some deaths, like the knife through the neck of Debbie or especially Andy’s evisceration in the hallway, look flawless no matter what format you watch them in. But even the iconic harpoon through Vera’s eye looks noticeably blurry. Even Steve Miner noticed this at the time of the movie’s release, and despite all of its technical achievements, he was pretty candid in a Fangoria interview that he felt that he had not quite gotten there. Or that he at least knew that there could be more to 3D if people were really willing to put in the work and the research.

“If I was going to do another 3D film…which I hope I will because I’d hate to see the knowledge I’ve gained on this film go to waste…I would work with an inventor and machinist and come up with the system that would best suit the movie I was doing,” Miner said in that interview.

That makes logical sense just taken at face value, but if you really think about it, that’s absolutely bananas because what Miner is describing there is in effect just about exactly what James Cameron did with Avatar. Had he been able to actually do his follow-up 3D movie, he could very well have gotten there first. In fact, Miner did have plans to make another 3D film in the ‘80s and it would have been another major franchise installment, though a very different one than the backwoods intimacy of Friday the 13^th. The gears must already have been turning in Miner’s mind at the time, especially as he noted in that interview: “I’d love to do a monster movie, and I have one in mind that I’d like to do in 3D. The 3D process is uniquely suited to photographing miniatures—you could have a monster right out in the audience if you go about it right.”

Even that article’s author, Bob Martin, was kind of vaguely scoffing at the notion that 3D had any kind of future at all, but man does Miner deserve credit for being able to see its potential especially after the grueling technical shoot of Part III. The monster movie in question, though, is obviously the most interesting thing. Not long after his success with Jason—and therefore not long after that Fango interview—Steve Miner approached Toho for an American Godzilla entry titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3D. Hiring Fred Dekker to write the script, Miner caught Toho’s interest and generated some buzz in Hollywood but failed to secure funding and thus the rights reverted back to Toho.

Unfortunately, Miner’s 3D Godzilla never became a reality, but thankfully his 3D Friday the 13^th did. Still one of the franchise’s most highly regarded entries, it was a huge success that will always be best known as the movie that gave us the hockey mask—for which I and countless other fans are eternally grateful—but it had a deeper impact on the industry itself as this silly little slasher proved once and for all that 3D could work in the mass market. And because of that, it’s not only a seminal Friday the 13^th, but a crucial landmark in the format’s technical history.